As Bright as Heaven(43)

The man comes toward the car cautiously.

“Do you happen to know if there is a young mother in your building sick with the flu? A mother with a young baby? On the first floor?”

He just blinks and stares.

“Do you speak English?”

“Little.” It sounds like leetle.

Mrs. Arnold repeats her questions slowly.

“Yes. Many sick inside,” the man answers.

“A young mother with a baby, though. We’re looking for a young mother with a baby. And the baby’s father.”

“I—not—marry,” the man says, like he just learned those three words that minute.

“No, I don’t mean you. I mean, is there a young mother on the first floor who has the flu?”

“Many sick for flu. Many. I have job. Good-bye.” The man turns and walks away, fitting the cap to his head.

Mrs. Arnold sighs loudly and looks at me. “Wait here.”

She gets out of the car, goes inside the building, and is gone for a few minutes. Then she comes back out. “I don’t think this is the building where you found him. There are two families on the first floor who have no idea what I’m talking about. What about that building across the street?”

I look at the shabby structure on the other side of the car. “Maybe.” I start to get out, but she tells me to stay put.

“The flu is worse here now than it was a few days ago. Let me go ask,” she says. “I don’t want you catching anything.”

I sit and wait, knowing she won’t meet with success. Four more little alleys and eight more hellish row houses, and Mrs. Arnold is weary of the search and clearly peeved at me. How can I not remember a place I had been to only hours before?

“It was just so terrible,” I say. After all the lies, it is nice to finally speak the truth. “His mother was all gray and bloody. Her eyes were stuck wide open.”

“All right, all right,” Mrs. Arnold says soothingly as she gets back into her car. “Take us back, Ambrose. We can try again tomorrow.”

Mrs. Arnold’s driver pulls up in front of Bright Funeral Home as the sun is setting. She tells me she’ll be by in the morning after breakfast and that this time she wants to talk to Mama about our being able to take care of the child until other family members can be found.

She drops me off and I go inside. Mrs. Sutcliff is sitting in our kitchen with a cotton mask over her nose and mouth and the baby in her arms. I quickly learn she stopped by to see if I’d heard anything new from Jamie in the last few days and was told about our finding the child. Mrs. Sutcliff then offered to run to the store for Evie to get the things we needed to care for him. New baby bottles are now boiling on the stove, and Evie is minding them with a pair of metal tongs.

“Did you find the place?” Evie asks, but I’m sure she already knows we didn’t.

I shake my head.

“Then it’s a miracle you were there at just the right time, Maggie,” Mrs. Sutcliff says. “Just think what could have happened if you hadn’t come across him. What a sweet little boy he is. Such a darling, sweet little boy.” Tears make her eyelids turn silver.

“Mrs. Arnold wants to try again tomorrow,” I say. “She also wants to talk to Mama about us keeping him.”

“Keeping him?” Evie says. “You mean for now.”

“Maybe for always. She says there are already too many orphans.”

“I heard that, too,” Dora Sutcliff says. “The city is begging people to take them. They can’t find enough families.”

Evie withdraws one of the bottles and sets it down on a dish towel laid out on the countertop next to the stove. “But this baby might not be an orphan. He might have other family.”

“But what if he doesn’t?” I reply.

“Or what if it’s just that no one can find them?” Evie looks up from the towel.

“Then for heaven’s sake you should take him in,” Mrs. Sutcliff says. “I would if I didn’t have Charlie to look after.” She stands and hands the baby to me. “I need to go home and get supper going. And Charlie will be wondering what is taking me so long.”

“We miss having Charlie over,” I say as I position the baby comfortably in my arms. I do miss Charlie. Seeing his mother reminds me how much. Charlie was always in a good mood, always listened to anything I had to say, was forever willing to try my ideas for how to teach him things. And he would talk about Jamie without me having to ask about him. He would begin sentences with “One time, Jamie . . . ,” and then he’d finish with telling me how Jamie once caught a fish as big as a railroad tie or how Jamie once got a black eye playing stickball or about the time Jamie took Charlie to the circus and they sat so close to the front of the ring that they could nearly reach out and touch the elephants.

“Yes, he misses coming here. But he’s not as careful as he should be, you know. And he seems to get sick more often than most children. I just can’t take the chance with what’s beyond that kitchen door. Listen, if you girls need anything else for the baby, you come tell me. And if your mother needs anything for Willa . . .”

She doesn’t finish her sentence.

“We’ll be fine, but thank you,” Evie says. “And thank you for going up to the store for me.”